A-england - Avalon: a purple homage

Ελληνικά/ Greek

When I woke up today I really wanted to paint my nails purple. No designs, no stamping, just pure purple. A-England's Avalon is the prettiest of my purples, therefore a suitable homage for the man who made purple his signature colour.

 

 

"But life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last"
RIP Prince

Korres Nail Colour Mega review - part2: The Cool Gang

Greek/Ελληνικά

What did you think of the warmer colours on the first part? Now it's time for the blues, the greens and the purples! 

72 – Spring Lilac: A beautiful greyed lilac colour, lighter that O.P.I.’s Done out in Deco which looks lavender in comparison, darker and more robust than Orly’s Bon Bon. Perfect in two layers.

82 – Ciel: a sky blue with a little bit of grey in, to mute it a bit so that it’s not too vibrant whilst remaining a beautiful azure shade. It has a bit of silver blue sheen, but you can only detect it if you know it’s there. With 2 layers there’s a bit of VNL, 3 layers and it’s opaque. 

89 – Blueberry: this is another stand out colour. A muted blurple (do bloggers still use this term?). I like these colours in general, but I didn't expect how much I was going to like wearing it. Perfect in two coats.

Korres’greens are some of the best I’ve got in my collection. The ony I had before was also a green and there’s a reason why I picked another 3 greens from this brand. Such wearable colours!

35 – Pastel Mint: a greyed yellow-leaning mint, not a chalky pastel, and I was quite surprised that it did not give me lobster-hands. Unfortunately my camera decided I should have them anyway, so don’t be disheartened by the way it looks in the pictures. It needs three thin layers for full opacity. It doesn't apply as nicely as the rest of the colours, but that's a universal pastel problem I think.

38 – Bright Mint: a goddess amongst my many mint polishes which is why I have included it in my giveaway. It has the Korres golden sheen, but it does register as gold at certain angles. A cool mint that is opaque in 2 layers.

90 – Pale Green: I have so much love for this one! It’s a smooth grey-green cream that applies like a dream. I would call it Misa’s Dirty, Sexy, Money’s lighter cousin. Perfect in two layers.

83 – Denim Blue is one of those polishes where the first layer applies too light and you think it’s going to need another two at least, but with the second layer it’s fully opaque and you’re left wondering how this magic happened. It’s somewhere between a navy and a midnight blue. In the bottle you can see a silver sheen, but not on the nail. It also didn't stain at all and since I wore it recently I can tell you it lasted a full five days without a top coat and had no chips or anything.

79 – Metallic Purple is not metallic at all, not in the traditional sense. It is a very red-leaning purple with a complex blue with pink particles flash. It’s like you’re wearing Venetian glass to be honest, it has that luminescent quality without an obvious metallic sheen. This is also going to be in the giveaway.

96 – Paradise Green: when I wore this colour I felt like a mermaid in the winter. It’s a teal base with green shimmer that depending on the angle can look almost teal. It was very difficult to photograph it and I wasn’t 100% successful. There is a very slight VNL with 2 layers, but not enough to necessitate a third layer.

I have to say that since I took this pictures I bought another 3 on a sale! They will certainly appear here in the future. So, what did you think of them? Any of them got your attention?
xxx
Elysse.

So tonight that I might see

Ελληνικά/ Greek

Mazzy Star’s album “So tonight that I might see” is one of my favourites of all time. I became acquainted with Hope Sandoval’s warm and otherworldly voice in the early 90s along with the rest of the world through the song ‘Fade into you’. One song was not enough to quench my thirst for music that spoke to me; I got the album and have been under its spell ever since.

It wasn’t just the music I loved, as I found the album cover equally mesmerizing. The early ‘90s were not a time where arabesques were popular and purple has always been a favourite colour of mine. It was only a matter of time before I attempted to replicate the design in one of my manicures.

I tried many colours and combinations to achieve this design, it was harder than I initially thought it would be. In the end I used 1 layer of a-England’s Camelot and then I used Stargazer’s Chrome Nail Polish in 235 to stamp a design from the Drikk drk-A palette and in the end I dabbed a little bit of Le Chat CM in True Violet.

I couldn't not attach a song to this post now, could I?

What do you think?

Elysse

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Retropolish: Seventeen Super Shine #471

Greek/Ελληνικά

I thought I'd create a special tag for my older polishes that may or may not be discontinued. I'll kick off this journey through my collection with a Greek polish by the company Seventeen (nothing to do with the UK 17 brand). These polishes unfortunately don't have names, only numbers, but they have an near infinite variety of colours. No 471 is a bit tricky to describe as depending on the light it looks from purplish to steel. It doesn't shift like a duochrome, the change in colour is much more solid with this one as you can see in the pictures. So pretty!

natural light (shade)

incandescent light

Lazy Days of Summer Challenge: Favourite Fruit

My favourite fruit is a type of grape that grows in Ancient Olympia, where my parents come from and where I spent every summer of my childhood (and yes, technically I am an Olympian,  though not so much of a godess). They are black seedless grapes and usually you can fbuy them sundried as currants, but I always preferred them fresh as they have a gorgeously sweet taste and their smell is intoxicatingly summery. I also love their texture. They look like they have this pale lavender dusting that if you touch it you see the deep purple of their skin. They are an aesthetic and gustatorial pleasure! Here is my attempt at it!

Fuchsias in the Garden

Greek/Ελληνικά

The fuchsias this season are glorious so it was a bit of a no-brainer what my 'In the Garden' manicure was going to be about!

Base colour: Etude House - GR605 

Stamping polish: LeChat CM - True Violet

Plate: Konad m83

Green leaves: Misa - The Grass is Greener on my Side

Flowers: OPI - Kiss me on my Tupils & LeChat CM - Royal Purple

A rare moment of sunny weather

Comparison: Orly - Mysterious Curse(Dark Shadows Collection), Orly - Royal Velvet and Stargazer - 317

Greek/Ελληνικά

Hello my dears!!

I'm so sorry for being absent for almost two weeks, but I've been having such a nightmarish time with blogger and Google Friend Connect! I couldn't make them work at all and after trying out a million different things, they just went back to normal as if nothing had happened.

I couldn't even enjoy the first time I've ever been featured on another blog! The Driveler Kate from one of my favourite blogs, drivel about frivol, featured me along with other great bloggers in this post. Thank you so much Kate for the feature and your kind words! I really loved the idea of the Liebster Awards and I've been around to look at some of the features, though of course GFC wouldn't let me follow any at the time *ugh*. I will have a look around again though! I also see I have some new followers; hello new followers! I will in time do my own nominations for the Liebster award, but for the time being I have a comparison for you that I'd prepared ages ago.

Mysterious Curse, Royal Velvet, 317, Natural Light.
Check out the colour shift of the shimmer on the StarGazer bottle!

Along with Buried Alive, I also ordered Mysterious Curse from the Orly Dark Shadows collection. I could tell it was somewhat similar to another polish I had from the Spring 2011 collection, Royal Velvet, I just wasn't expecting them to be almost identical. So, here is a comparison I did between those two and another similar polish,Stargazer 317 version 1.

All three have a deep purple base with a lot of fine shimmer in that shifts from bright pink, to blue. The pink shift is actually a lot stronger than what you see in my pictures, but my camera consistantly fails to capture it. They are practically dupes and their only differences are:

*Orly Royal Velvet is much less pigmented than the other two (requires 4 coats at least as opposed to 3) and harder to apply. It's a pooling nightmare as you can see in the pictures.

*Both the Orly polishes left behind red staining in spite of using a base coat. 

*Stargazer 317 has a lot more shimmer in and a slightly darker base colour. It is also more pigmented, you could get away with only 2 coats of it if you're careful. 

Mysterious Curse is a better polish than Royal Velvet as it is more pigmented and more manageable, but I can't help being very dissappointed in Orly who came out with -practically-the same polish twice in a year. If the Stargazer 317 was easier to find, I would undoubtedly point you to its direction as it is much better and a lot cheaper at the same time. What a shame it's not!

Paper swatch along with some more colours, natural light

One coat/ 3 coats, artificial light 

First coat

Natural light

Artificial light

Artificial light and as much of the pink shift as my camera could capture.

Stargazer 317 Ultra Cover Nail Polishes

Last year I saw this polish here and really really liked it. Purple with a blue sheen, what's not to like! However, when I ordered it from the Stargazer shop, what I received was completely different. The one I received is a bright pink with a multichrome shimmer that shifts from pink to purple, the same kind of shimmer you find in Stargazer Ultra Cover Nail Polish 305. I looked around on line and in the end I found the version of 317 I was originally looking for, but no further details as to why or how they are different.

The odd thing is, even their barcodes are exactly the same. I thought I should point this out on a separate post in case someone is looking for the Stargazer Ultra Cover Nail Polish 317 and ends up having the same problems I did.

direct sunlight

direct sunlight

Natural light

My First (and Only) Crackle Polish: P2 - Violet Fusion

Greek/ Ελληνικά

I never really "got" crackle polish and I don't like glitter polish; put the two together and suddenly I am a fan. Even I don't get myself sometimes, but that's one of the joys of being human I am guessing!

Lo and behold the polish! P2 - Violet Fusion over SpaRitual - Solitude. Violet Fusion is a jelly purple base with gold fine glitter in, but not the kind of glitter that takes forever and a day to remove. Pretty!

When this came out there weren't any other sparkly crackle polishes on the market, but there's plenty now. OPI has a couple and China Glaze has the Crackle Glitters. 

I wore it for 5 full days which means love. 

Etude House PP904 Mystic Purple: Magic purple!

Of all the beautiful polishes that I own Etude House PP904 Mystic Purple, this is in a league of its own. It's just so unique! It's not a duochrome, but it looks very different depending on the light. It can look from purplish-grey, to purple, purple with bronze sheen and when the light hit it directly it simply glows. The base colour is a cool purplish grey with a lot of pink and gold micro shimmer which combine to give it the bronzy hue, but at the same time you can see both the gold and the pink sheen. Honestly, I just wish I could capture it with my camera, but I doubt any camera can capture its many 'faces'! It only takes 2 coats to make it opaque, it's smooth and it has s small, flat, excellent brush!